Cairo, February 23
Libyan Interior Minister Abdel Fatah Yunes and a top aide of Muammar Gaddafi’s powerful son Saif resigned today, the latest to disown the regime of the defiant leader who vowed to crush unprecedented protests against his 41-year rule despite global demands for an end to violence.

“I announce my resignation from all my duties in response to the revolution of February 17 (against Gaddafi),” Yunes, attired in a military uniform, said on the pan-Arabic satellite channel Al-Jazeera.

Gen Yunes, who followed in the steps of Justice Minister Mustapha Abdeljalil, called on the armed forces to join the revolt and respond to the legitimate demands of the people.

Reports said that Youssef Sawani, a senior aide to Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, one of Gaddafi’s influential sons, also resigned from his post in protest against the violence.

The resignations came a day after Abdeljalil quit in protest over the “excessive use of violence” against protesters, and diplomats at Libya’s mission to the United Nations called on the army to help remove “the tyrant Muammar Gaddafi”.

Libyan diplomats in several countries have either resigned in protest over the use of force, including the alleged firing by warplanes on civilian targets, or renounced Gaddafi’s leadership, saying they stood with the protesters.

The Libyan Interior Ministry gave the first official death toll since the uprising began a week ago, saying 300 persons had died so far, 189 civilians and 111 soldiers.

Meanwhile, India and 14 other members of the powerful UN Security Council strongly condemned the use of force against the peaceful protesters and demanded an immediate end to violence in the country. — AFP

Jubilant rebels and supporters thronged the streets, waving red, green and blacks flags from the pre-Gaddafi era and giving out snacks and juice to passing cars, which honked their horns in a giant party.

People danced, cheered and played loud music. Alongside charred buildings scarred by the violence, one man held up a picture of Gaddafi’s head grafted on to a pig’s body as trucks full of exuberant opponents of the Libyan leader screeched around the streets. — Reuters

Manama, February 23
Bahrain has freed 23 persons accused of trying to topple the island’s Sunni Muslim monarchy, along with more than 200 other mostly Shi’ite prisoners detained in recent months, a lawyer said today.

The prisoner release was a further concession to the mainly Shi’ite protesters who took to the streets last week to demand a constitutional monarchy and an elected government, emboldened by a surge of popular unrest across the Arab world.

It also preceded the expected return to Bahrain of Hassan Mushaimaa, leader of the hardline Shi’ite Haq party, one of two people tried in absentia for his part in the alleged coup plot.

Mohammed al-Tajer, a lawyer for the 23 activists, said about 250 prisoners had been released. Most were detained as part of a crackdown launched on some Shi’ite opposition groups last August and during subsequent protests. — Reuters

Libyan dictator Col Muammar Gaddafi’s defiant pledge to die a ‘martyr’ and crack down on anti-government protesters has set off alarm bells in the international community and among human rights groups.

In a speech broadcast on state TV on Tuesday, Gaddafi said he had not ordered ‘one bullet to be fired’, but vowed ‘when I do, everything will burn’. However, a Libyan dissident, who like most others interviewed for this story spoke on the condition of anonymity because of a fear of reprisal, said the regime has launched ‘horrific assaults’ on unarmed civilians in its attempt to crush the protests. “Gaddafi has shown that he is willing to burn Tripoli down,” he said.

In Washington, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said ‘we join the international community in strongly condemning the violence, as we’ve received reports of hundreds killed and many more injured.” She described the bloodshed as “completely unacceptable”.

“There is no ambivalence; there is no doubt in anyone’s mind that the violence must stop and that the government of Libya has a responsibility to respect the universal rights of all of its citizens and to support the exercise of those rights,” Hillary said.

In New York, the United Nations Security Council held a special session on developments in Libya. Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch, said she feared the death toll would rise much higher “unless Col. Gaddafi ends his bloody attempts to suppress dissent”.

According to Libyans and dissidents living outside the country, hundreds of people have been killed and thousands injured as “African mercenaries” beholden to the regime have indiscriminately fired on protesters.

Human Rights Watch put the death toll at more than 234. The International Coalition Against War Criminals reported 519 deaths, 3,980 wounded and at least 1,500 missing since the start of demonstrations a few days ago. White House spokesman Jay Carney described the violence as ‘appalling’.

Anti-government protesters have taken control of the eastern part of Libya, including the second-largest city of Benghazi. Phone connections to Libya appeared to be cut for most of the day, but Libyans who managed to get through to their relatives on Skype recounted horrific anecdotes. They said mercenaries armed with heavy artillery were firing indiscriminately at unarmed protesters. War planes and helicopters flew low over the capital in an attempt to intimidate civilians. Some said air strikes had been launched in parts of Tripoli. However, there was no way to independently verify this claim.

A relative in Libya told Rihab Elhaj, a Libyan American based in the Washington metropolitan area, that ‘African mercenaries’ had been given orders by the regime to shoot at groups of more than three. People were venturing out on their own or in pairs, Elhaj said.

Anti-government protesters are planning a million-man march in Tripoli on Friday.

The measure was one of several announced by the monarch, who returned home today after a three-month absence during which he underwent medical treatment in the US. Abdullah ordered that 40 billion riyals, or about $10.7 billion, be injected into the country’s development fund. — AP

Beijing, February 23
An online campaign has urged people in 13 Chinese cities to rally every Sunday to press for government transparency and free expression, following a call last week for Middle East-style protests.

The new call, posted this week on a blog run by overseas-based human rights website Boxun.com, appeared to be from the same group behind a mysterious web campaign for protests last Sunday that echoed those rocking the Arab world.

The earlier call sparked a heavy police turnout at designated protest sites in Beijing and other cities. The events appeared lightly attended, however, and free of major incidents.

“What we need to do now is to put pressure on the Chinese ruling (Communist) party,” said the renewed appeal.

“If the party does not conscientiously fight corruption and accept the supervision of the people, then will it please exit the stage of history.” Apparently attempting to make a statement without falling foul of China’s security forces, participants were urged not to take overt action but to merely show up for the 2 pm “strolling” protests. — AFP

Arab dictators facing the wrath of their people have been warning that the downfall of their regimes would lead to the rise of radical Islamic groups to power. Ousted Tunisian and Egyptian Presidents Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali and Hosni Mubarak were the first to threaten against the possibility that the Muslim Brotherhood and other fundamentalist organisations were planning to replace their regimes.

In fact, the two tyrants even went as far as claiming that radical Muslims were behind the popular uprisings that eventually brought them down. They made this claim in order to win sympathy in the West, where fear of radical Islam appears to be growing by the day. Both Ben Ali and Mubarak told US government officials and journalists that their countries would be turned into Islamic “republics” controlled by extremist anti-Western Muslims who support the Al-Qaida, the Hizbollah, the Hamas and the Islamic Jihad.

But while it’s true that Islamists had played a relatively small role in the toppling of the Tunisian and Egyptian regimes, there are now signs that they are seeking to hijack the pro-democracy campaigns throughout the Arab world, including parts of the Gulf, home to more than four million Indians and from where New Delhi imports more than 70 per cent of its oil.

Previously, Muslim Brotherhood supporters in the two countries preferred to hide in the shadow as the “Facebook youth” took to the streets to demand regime change and democracy. The Islamists had good reason to remain away from the spotlight. They did not want to give Ben Ali and Mubarak an excuse to use them as a tool to scare the West. Now, however, the Muslim radicals feel safe to emerge from their hiding places.

In Tunisia, the head of the banned Islamic En-Nahda group, 70-year-old Rachid Ghannouchi, who lived in exile in the UK for 20 years, returned to his country with the intention of playing a role in the new regime.

Last week, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the most influential Muslim Brotherhood cleric in the world, returned triumphantly to Egypt after spending nearly half of his life in exile in Qatar from where he lectured Mubarak, describing him as “blind deaf and dumb.” Shortly before Mubarak fell from power, Qaradawi told him, “There is no more room for you anymore Mubarak. I advise you to learn lessons from Ben Ali. Leave Egypt on your feet now”

Qaradawi, 85, subsequently led the Friday prayer at Cairo’s famous Tahrir Square, where the anti-government protests began. The event quickly turned into a mass celebration over the removal of Mubarak from power, attracting an estimated two million Egyptians.

The return of Ghannouchi and Qaradawi to their countries is seen as a huge victory for the Muslim Brotherhood and its sister organisations. Some Arabs have drawn parallels between the two clerics and Iran’s legendary revolutionary leader Ayatollah Khomeini.

Political analysts in the Arab world believe that there is no way the Islamists could be blocked. “It would be ineffective to ban the Muslim Brotherhood from running in new elections [in Tunisia and Egypt],” said Khushano Tello, a commentator with a Saudi-owned newspaper. “Democracy gives the Muslim Brotherhood the right to participate in political life although their ideology is anti-democratic.”

Indeed, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt announced this week that it will establish a political party named Freedom and Justice that would run in future elections. Earlier, a spokesman for the group indicated its willingness to form a coalition government with former UN nuclear watchdog chief Mohammed El Baradei. Founded in 1928, the Muslim Brotherhood is the largest opposition group in the country and has been officially banned since 1954. The group’s decision to run under a new name invokes the tactics of the Palestinian Hamas’s move back in January 2006. It was then that the Hamas formed a list called ‘Change and Reform’ and defeated its rival secular Fatah faction in the parliamentary election in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The Libyan and Yemeni dictators, smarting from the political heat as the anti-government tsunami hits their countries, are also trying to use radical Islam as a way of intimidating the West into supporting them.

The Yemeni President, Ali Abdullah Saleh, has repeatedly warned the Americans and Europeans that his country could easily fall into the hands of the Al-Qaida and other fundamentalist groups that have long been waging war on his US-backed government. Muammar Gaddafi and his son, Saif al-Islam, have also talked about the possibility that Libya would be transformed into “Islamic emirates” once the regime collapses. Both father and son claim that Osama Bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, will turn Libya into a second Afghanistan, thus providing an excuse for the US and other Western powers to “resume colonialism” of Libya.

But for now it appears that the Arab dictators’ attempts to scare the West have fallen on deaf ears. Even President Barack Obama does not seem to be too worried about the prospects of Muslim Brotherhood taking over Egypt. In an interview with Fox News, he said that the Islamist group did not represent a majority and was only one faction among many in Egypt.